talking 'bout my generation (circa september 2006)

It feels like this should be a pivotal, epiphanic time in my life, but the more I learn, the more I feel myself freezing, shuddering in wary anticipation of a lifetime of drudgery and meaningless toil. We are the hollow men, it is said, devoid of spirituality and conviction, and I'm afraid I'm starting to believe it. It's an apathetic generational pandemic, as the world shrinks and wars become more and more abstract. Far from the shock value of Vietnam's novel projection in North America, we are so bombarded with imagery of horror and loss that they lose their meaning, blurring together in a concentrated effort at subduing the will for revolution. Knowledge is a handicap, and one's greatest asset. The more perfect it becomes, the further one is from understanding. It's like the curved line in graphing whose theoretical implications I always failed to grasp in 11th grade: it never reaches zero. We float in our indecision, caught up by the whitherto's and whyfores as we deplete resources and abandon faith in an alternate state. Without education, one cannot begin to fully understand their projected role in society and in life, but the more education they receive, the more futility is brought home.

This in a world that has conceived of butterflies and orgasms, waterfalls and chocolate mousse. This, in a world whose star is essential and whose creatures coexist in a Darwinian Utopia, surviving. There is oxygen, and water, and baby laughter. There are rainbows and bengal tigers and orchids. Fairytales peacefully nestle in purely scientific ink, paper and voice. The brain, electromagnetic and chemical processes firing, conceives of unicorns and Nirvana and quantum physics, while regulating the corporeal essentials - breath, cognisance, digestion, desire. Desire. Humanity dreams, together and one by one. We have kissed the moon ("One small step") and gone home to dance with the Sandman. Frogs marry ducklings and grow to be princes and swans. Kittens grow whiskers. The smell of freshly baked bread wafts, intermingling with a warm glow of sunset. On one side of the world, people rise to the same rhythmic pulses that tell those opposite them to lay down and close their eyes. Shakespeare, Keats, Beethoven, Einstein, Ghandi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Chaucer, John Lennon, Mother Theresa, Dr. Suess, Tolkien, Atticus Finch, Callahan, Ender Wiggin, Kris Kringle, Nikola Tesla, Hobbes...

Despite spiritual stagnation and cutural assimilation, globalization is no excuse for apathy. We are willfully ignorant. (Not by nature, by decision.) May this millenial generation find their muse...